Just wondering how often do you change you TC, Gearbox, Engine oil and brake fluid when your tracking your car?

 

Fresh everything before the track day, fresh everything after. If it's a 2 day event, I change the engine oil in between days.

 

Oil before every track day weekend. Tcase and trans after 3-6 events ( depending on weather and what kind of racing I did) or once per year. Whichever comes first.
I don't daily the car.
stock engine (450whp), stock tcase /c 130k miles. Stock 6spd trans.

 

My VIII isn't super powerful (~320whp) and it's not dailied anymore so it gets a fresh set of oil at the start of the season (I run about 3 HPDEs a year)....results from blackstone seem fine with that approach. Other fluids once a year.

 

I have a few Blackstone containers in the garage. If I would get off my lazy *** and send some samples in, I'm sure I would see that I am changing too often. For as little as I drive the car, I'm sure changing the oil before each weekend event is overkill. Now that my oil changes have gone up an extra $30-$40 per change, I may look into it.

 

I agree. These high performance synthetics are very robust. Sending it to the lab would likely confirm that!!!

BITOG member

 

Over kill on oil changes is much cheaper than new hard parts. I have almost $6000 wrapped up in a built trans, tcase, and rear diff. $180/track day or weekend is good insurance on drivetrain fluids. As for the engine, that's a $4000-$10k mishap, so, again, $150ish there is good insurance as well. I also run different oil at the track than I do on the street, so there's that.


Also, draining fluid before and after could help you find an issue before it becomes a catastrophic failure. Same thing with changing engine oil in the middle of a weekend event. You can look at it and see if its full of metal or not and possibly catch a bearing issue (or something else), before you grenade the motor.


Since I don't daily my car, the 2-3 time it sees the track per year represent my "maintenance" fluid changes also.


I drive my car like a racecar, it gets treated like a racecar.

 

Meh, if it's legitimately overkill, then it's overkill and unnecessary to me. Sure, I could change tires or brake pads every event too, but nah. If it's needed I'll gladly do it but if not, I'm not going to waste.
I plan to put in fresh oil, run an event, drain enough for a sample, and let the car sit until I get results back. If there's any weird results, the car sits in the garage, anyway.
Then again, if this new motor dies, the car is going bye bye. I've wasted enough time and money on it.

 

I think you are asking Blackstone, a company at caters to fleet operators, to judge whether the oil in your race car has life left in it. Depending on the oil you use it may not be adequate for racing abuse when poured from the bottle - two different worlds.

 

Kinda. I'm asking them to give me results, not so much make the decision for me. I'm pretty sure the oil I use is suitable.

 

Like I said, I drive my car like a racecar, so I treat it like a racecar. Tires and breaks both have a measureable use period, and they don't degrade (safety wise) throughout the period like oil does.


You spend $30 on oil analysis, I spend a bit more and just change it. Impending catastrophic failures can be seen by the naked eye in the oil and in the oil filter.

 

Yup, I used to do Blackstone like twice a year. Now I think I'm just going to do it on a new motor after break-in, or if I have reason to suspect something is wrong.

 

$30 vs $100. I'm okay with that. Also, I'm not saying I refuse to change the oil. Just that I'm going to be sure it's necessary.